Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, more than a million people have fled, causing a refugee crisis of enormous magnitude. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), upwards of 3,000 Syrians a day have registered as asylum seekers in neighboring Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey. The lion’s share of these refugees—between 300,000 and 400,000—have ended up in Jordan, with approximately 30 percent of the total settling in the Al Zaatari refugee camp and 70 percent moving into host communities throughout the country. UNFPA further estimates that three-quarters of the refugees are women and children.

By all accounts, displaced Syrians are encountering grim conditions, with overt violence, supply shortages, and filth more the rule than the exception.

The Al Zaatari refugee camp, administered by the UN High Commission for Refugees, was built to accommodate 60,000 people, but there may be as many as 120,000 refugees there now, according to the New York Times. Yifat Susskind, executive director of MADRE, was in Jordan and visited the Al Zaatari camp in mid-April.

“Jordan is a highly functioning state, but it is resource stressed, especially for water,” Susskind told RH Reality Check. “Syrian refugees are putting a huge strain on the population, and tensions have developed. For example, Syria is a beautiful, green country with adequate fresh water, so it does not have a culture of conservation. One of the big issues in the camp is that refugees are protesting the amount of their daily water ration. At the same time, water-strapped Jordanians are beginning to resent camp residents who they perceive as having easy access to all the water they need.”

In addition, Jordanians are fearful that the Syrian influx will inflame already pervasive problems, including deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, and the overgrazing of land.

Even more daunting are safety concerns. Al Zaatari’s toilets are unlit so many woman are terrified to use them at night, and there is a need for more routine health-care services, including basics like adequate access to sanitary pads, and ongoing educational programs for youth. Although UNFPA reports that it provided reproductive health services to more than 3,600 women in the camp during two weeks in early April, Susskind said that there are nonetheless barriers that need to be addressed, among them the distance between the health center and the location of many people’s temporary housing. “The camp is so large that it can take an hour and 15 minutes to walk to the area where services are offered,” she said.

“For women who are in the last months of pregnancy, who are sick, or who have just delivered a baby, this location poses a terrible hardship,” Susskind said. “There has been talk of trying to raise money for a shuttle bus, but this has not yet happened.”

Despite this criticism, Susskind is quick to commend UNFPA for its valiant efforts. Still, as she spoke, she shook her head at the enormity of the issues facing aid workers each day.

Dealing with survivors of sexual trauma or rape is even more problematic, she continued: “We know that rape and domestic violence always increase in times of war and displacement, and we know that many of the women became refugees after being raped or out of fear that sexual violence would be perpetrated against them or their family members.”

She went on, “There is no way to estimate the number or refugees who have been raped or sexually abused, and it is really clear that this is a topic the women won’t talk about. Syrian refugees have a lot of disincentives to keep them from coming forward to talk about these issues. They live in a culture where honor killing is practiced and where the blame and shame of rape is placed exclusively on them.” This means that crisis counseling teams need to be attuned to the signs of trauma that typically appear in survivors, from the inability to bond with a newborn to disassociation to overt clinical depression.

Women Under Siege Director Lauren Wolfe, writing in The Atlantic, calls Syria “a nation of traumatized survivors,” and notes that men as well as women have been violated by government forces and plainclothes militia in a campaign meant to humiliate, intimidate, and ultimately stifle resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

What’s more, overwrought and fearful families have pushed girls as young as 13 into arranged—some would call them forced—marriages. In more than a few instances, this has unwittingly placed them in the hands of traffickers; in other cases, it has meant moving adolescent girls far from their families, isolating them from everyone they have ever known.

Meanwhile, the number of refugees keeps growing as more and more people opt to leave Syria, on foot and by paying drivers to transport them across borders that may eventually be closed. While humanitarian groups such as Handicap International, the Jordanian Red Crescent, Mercy Corps, and UNICEF are working to provide supplies to this diaspora, the specific needs of women and girls all too often fall through the cracks. Code Pink and MADRE, among other feminist groups, are working to address and meet female needs; they recently teamed up to purchase 350 solar lanterns so that at least some of the women in Al Zaatari can be more relaxed about walking in the camp after dark. They are also fundraising to train midwives to counsel women who show signs of sexual abuse and trauma.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and like many of you, I will spend it at home with my family. I’m looking forward to the home-made cards and presents from my kids, and maybe the great gift of sleeping in an extra hour. As I enjoy this time, I’ll also be thinking of the Syrian mothers I just met in a refugee camp in Jordan.

Like mothers everywhere, their first priority is to ensure their children’s safety. That’s why many of them fled their homes in the first place. Now, as their families grow destitute as refugees, many mothers feel that the only way they can provide for their teenage daughters is to marry them off. “I would rather see her married than hungry,” said one mother, Leila, of her young daughter. “I just pray that this man will be kind to her.”

A young activist in a local Jordanian women’s organization told me, “This was supposed to be a revolution for freedom in Syria. But for the girls there is no freedom. Instead there are men from the Gulf countries lurking around the refugee camp looking for child brides.”

In my work with women around the world, I see mothers face choices like Leila’s every day.

After an earthquake devastated Haiti, millions of families were displaced from their homes. Mothers put up makeshift tents in huge public encampments with no running water, no security, and no lights at night. When an epidemic of rape swept through the camps, mother were their children’s only line of defense. “I stayed awake through the nights,” another mother, Louise, told me. “I had to choose between sleeping or keeping watch over my two daughters. I held a broken bottle for protection and positioned it to dig into my arm if I fell asleep.”

The mothers I met in Kenya were also forced to make decisions no parent should have to face. Severe drought over recent years has decimated herding communities in East Africa. As animals died off and water for even basic survival grew scarce, more and more families resorted to trading daughters for dowries, in some cases to ensure the survival of the rest of the family.

In Jordan, Syrian mothers who are refugees are working with local women’s groups to protect the health and well-being of their daughters and provide safety and shelter for their families.

In Haiti, mothers organized community watch groups in the tent camps and reached out to rape survivors with health care and counseling through the women’s rights organization KOFAVIV (the Commission of Women Victims for Victims). A bill they put before the Haitian parliament would create Haiti’s first age of consent and criminalize marital rape for the first time, protecting their daughters now and throughout their futures.

In Kenya, mothers helped create a network of shelters as a place for their daughters to receive an education and enjoy their childhood, protecting them from female genital mutilation and forced early marriages. They call these shelters the Nanyori Network. In Swahili, Nanyori means “You are loved.”

This Mother’s Day, I’ll be thinking of these women, mothers just like me, facing unimaginable hardships. I’ll be thinking of their strength and their dignity, of their dedication and unfailing love. As the poet Alexis De Veaux has written, “Motherhood is more than the biological act of giving birth. It’s an understanding of the needs of the world.” Fighting to meet those needs, all around the globe, is what mothers do.

An estimated 150,000 people have fled Syria for Jordan since March 2011. Temporary solutions to what may be a long-term problem include how to integrate those fleeing across the border to Jordan. In this environment, “marriages of convenience,” or even forced marriages, can thrive, essentially undetected.

This article is the second in a two-part series commissioned by RH Reality Check. You can find the first here.

An estimated 150,000 people have fled Syria for Jordan since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in March 2011.The Jordanian authorities have made much of how they’ve welcomed refugees, but even after they granted the United Nations permission to build 200 refugee camps along their northern border, housing up to one million people, the focus is still very much on temporary solutions to what may be a long-term problem.

Refugee services include short-term housing, inexpensive rentals, “holding centers,” and, since August 1, the first tent camp at Zaatari. Countries as dissimilar as Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia have dispatched medical teams to the border to provide on-site care. Save the Children has launched projects at Zaatari for young people. These efforts are essential, amid what the Jordanian government has just recently begun to call a humanitarian crisis.

Women tend to bear the brunt of the more slow-burn problems surrounding conflict, and the setup in Jordan is ripe for this to continue. So-called “refugee issues” are not just those related to camps, or to short-term care. Jordanian and Syrian societies are close-knit socially, and much of the focus until very recently has been on how to integrate those fleeing across the border into Syrian society, and into homes and pre-existing structures. In this environment, “marriages of convenience,” or even forced marriages, can thrive, essentially undetected. Many question whether—under the circumstances—these marriages are even a problem at all.

Talk is Cheap

Visitors to Amman speak of a recent phenomenon: get into any taxi, chat with the driver, and he will tell you that “cheap wives” are to be found in the refugee camps near the Syrian border. “Cheap” refers to the dowry given to the brides’ families, as well as to the women’s expectations. Jordan is a comparatively poor, aid-dependent nation. Around 14.2 percent live below the poverty line, according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook. Nevertheless, cultural norms dictate that most Syrian women will have lower expectations for their standard of living, having come from an even poorer country.

“There are all kinds of social conceptions of Syrian women as the most obedient, the most caring of their husbands out of all Middle Eastern women,” says Khadija, an activist from the northern Jordanian town of Irbid, close to the Syrian border.

“There are all kinds of jokes now within Jordanian society that the women should watch out, as with all these Syrian women in the country, the men will always choose a Syrian woman over a Jordanian woman.”

Add to this that Syrian women are normally paler, a valuable asset in a region in which skin-bleaching products replace tanning products. There is a growing sense that female Syrian refugees, while socially elevated, are now increasingly perceived as vulnerable, due to the conditions under which many refugees are living.

The State of Things

Until the opening of the Zaatari tent camp, refugees were being housed in so-called “transfer” facilities, usually rehabilitated private property that had formerly served as parts of the university campus, or even private gardens. The Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO), an umbrella group tasked with the coordination of all aid and refugee services in the Kingdom, has said that all refugees currently living in transfer facilities will be transferred to Zaatari, which can house up to 120,000 people.

Until now, refugees were held in facilities that were labeled as temporary until a Jordanian citizen could act as a “guarantor,” who would care for the refugee financially and legally. But the situation has reportedly been far from temporary for many. In early May, during a visit to Jordan by this reporter for RH Reality Check, Mohammed Kilani of the JHCO estimated that the Beshabshe tower block, designed to house 700 people “is holding at least 2000.” Aid worker Hisham Dirani of Muhajeroon Ahrar reported that there was “no plumbing, no sewage, and no ventilation.” One former resident said, “I met people in there who’d been there for six months… It was like living in hell.” The expectation that, as Kilani put it, “a Jordanian family will open their homes to these people” after a short stay did not always prove true for those who did not have Jordanian relatives or a guarantor to bail them out.

Guardian Angels

Into this troubling situation comes the guardianship system, instituted primarily to allow refugees with friends or family who are Jordanian citizens to come to the transit facilities and to vouch for the continued well-being of the refugees, once they leave the camp. Given the years of intermarriage and long-standing familial and social connections between the two neighboring countries, there is undoubtedly a logic to this system.

There is, however, also potential for abuse.

Jordan boasts a long history of accepting refugees from all over the Middle East, but it is questionable to what extent Jordanians are “opening their homes” to refugees in camps with whom they have no family ties. The camps, either temporary or longer-term, are based primarily in Jordan’s northern region. The desperately-poor surrounding areas experience water shortages and electricity outages. “These are close-knit communities,” a Jordanian colleague said. “You wouldn’t just invite strangers to live in your house; you need some kind of social link to make that possible.”

It’s possible that those acting as guardians for refugees are doing so because it is culturally expected of them. And a marriage between the two families provides a “convenient” way of making this socially acceptable as well. It’s also possible that men are entering the camps looking to find wives, and in so doing are bringing the women, and possibly their families, into their homes.

Former residents of Beshabshe spoke frequently of witnessing men being allowed into the block in order to, effectively, cruise for wives. Statistics on the scale of the problem are impossible to obtain. It’s also impossible to contact anyone who has had personal experience with the issue. “You hear stories everywhere of how Syrian women have a price now,” said “O,” a female anti-regime activist, who lived in the Ramtha center when she first arrived.

I heard of one man marrying six different girls in this situation, and I even met a family who were ready to sell their daughters. With all the misery I saw in that center, I could predict the kind of future that these girls would face. I don’t want to judge their motivations, but at the same time, these men are opportunists. It’s sick.

Kilani viewed the issue purely in terms of aid. “But is it really such a problem?” he argued. “If a man marries a woman, he is obliged to care for her family.” That the women involved are being denied a role in choosing whom they marry did not appear to concern him. Indeed, such marriages can be beneficial to many charities and aid groups dealing with the Syrian refugees, because their limited funding can stretch only to short-term care. Off-loading a few women from the system means more resources to go around. Furthermore, many, if not all, of the organizations have some kind of religious affiliation, be they Muslim or Christian, making them less likely to criticize something that plays into a conservative social structure.

Aid organizations have condemned the guardianship system’s potential for exploitation, in terms of both marriage and work. Many international organizations that have visited the camps, including the Beshabshe transfer facility, were concerned about the lack of follow-through after refugees had been signed out of the facility. Unfortunately, none were willing to comment on the guardianship issue, given the shift of focus to the housing of refugees in Zaatari. That initiative brings its own set of new problems. Eva Abu Halaweh of the Jordanian human rights law group, Mizan, said:

While foreign women who marry Jordanian men are entitled to equal rights before the law, any marriage formed through this kind of relationship is going to have a built-in power imbalance, which could bring further problems.

The families of Syrian girls, married as young as ages 13 or 14, are increasingly concerned for their safety. Khaled Ghanem of the Islamic Society Centre told the U.N. news service, IRIN, “In Maraq, we have come across around 50 cases of early marriages since the day we started helping out Syrians. Most of them are married to Syrians, especially cousins.”

According to Jordanian marriage laws, age 18 is the legal marriage age, but religious leaders can grant “informal” marriages to younger people. The marriages can be certified when the parties turn age 18. IRIN quoted a mother, who arranged marriages for her daughters, ages 15 and 14. “As a single mother,” she said, “I cannot support them. I cannot feed them. I wanted to make sure they are okay, so I asked around if people know of good Syrian men they could marry.” Such arrangements involving Jordanians do not seem such a remote possibility.

The policy toward refugees is changing with the move to Zaatari, but this does not mean the end of issues surrounding “marriages of convenience.” Zaatari is operated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Its policy of “encampment” means that refugees are unable to leave the camp. There is also debate as to whether the guardianship system has been suspended or ended altogether. But with refugees now confined to a tent camp on an unforgiving dust plain in the middle of the desert, some are keen to escape by any means possible. Also, Zaatari is guarded by the Jordanian police, who have been responsible for guarding the transfer facilities, such as Beshabshe. Given that they were apparently allowing men into the camps before, there is no guarantee that they won’t continue to do so while policing Zaatari. With confusion over whether or not the guardianship system has ended, and with the camp filling up, and resources being stretched, there is potential for further exploitation.

Better the Devil You Know

This issue cannot be examined without looking at the “convenience” aspect, because this is not purely an issue of brute force and one-sided exploitation. For the women, girls, or families involved, socio-economic factors drive their consent to, or encouragement of, such arrangements.

One factor is a desire to propel oneself or one’s daughter out of the situation in which the refugees are being forced to live. It’s a shockingly obvious choice: live in a refugee camp in potentially awful conditions, or enjoy comparative freedom in Jordan. Because there is frequent intermarriage between the two countries, the latter may seem like the most sensible option. Girls are also more likely to be seen as burdens. Finding someone else to care for them lightens the already heavy load on families, who are struggling to support themselves in cheap accommodations, or trying to make meager rations feed a family in a refugee camp.

Another factor is fear of the unknown. The future of Syria hangs in the balance, and, sadly, the conflict now engulfing its main cities could rage on for years. The situation for those who left is as unstable as for those who stayed. The draw of a new, more secure life in Jordan is strong in a time of crisis. “Women being traded always happens with war,” O said.

But still, I worry about these girls. I know that this is a kind of survival strategy, but I wish instead that having survived the Assad regime would have made them stronger in a different way—to be able to escape not just the regime but to a place where they are not harmed like this.

The third, and most worrying factor, is the fear of rape, which is pushing families to marry off their daughters. Being raped can result in social isolation that will ruin the woman’s future chances of marriage, and thus of social and financial security. During a recent visit to Zaatari, I talked to a refugee from Baba Amr in Homs, who told me, “You need to know, everyone needs to know: they are raping women. Hezbollah, the Iranians, they are in Syria and they are raping women.”

Another interviewee from Dara’a said, “Regime forces go into the houses, round up the men to kill them, then they rape the women.” Lauren Wolfe, director of Women Under Siege, recently wrote in The Atlantic Magazine about a project her group conducted to map the incidences of rape in Syria found 117 reports thus far. Eighty percent of the victims were female, and the majority of those surveyed said the attacks came from pro-regime forces. Rape as a weapon of war has, unfortunately, become standard practice, despite the fact that the presence of foreign elements in Syria is still open to debate. But whatever the identity of the perpetrators or the actual stats, the fear of rape is real and widespread among the refugees. One of the many abominations committed in the fog of war, rape is just as frightening as shelling. This might explain the link to Hezbollah or Iran—whether true or otherwise—in the minds of some of the refugees.

A Syrian woman who married a Jordanian from Mafraq almost 20 years ago said, “In one of the mosques you find Syrian men who saying that they will marry their daughters for free, provided that the man is suitably religious, to ensure their safety.” By marrying, or by ensuring that their daughters are married, even if that means staying in Jordan, women are preserving their social status and security for years to come. They are also fleeing a form of violence that they cannot report, one which may remain a weapon in an increasingly sectarian conflict long after Assad falls. A “marriage of convenience” to escape the possibility of rape may be confining in some ways, but the fathers are consenting to their daughters’ marriages to preserve their dignity. Some are even arranging their marriages, which is common in more conservative societies such as those in Syria and Jordan. This smacks of allowing legal rape in place of illegal rape.

Silence Is a Virtue

Syrian men do not believe that the “marriage of convenience” is a problem that should be publicly discussed. Intensely patriotic Syrians who have left often spend their days discussing their hopes for a better Syria without Assad. For them, the idea of Syrian women marrying foreigners seems to hint at a kind of lost national pride. They sense that something is being stolen from them. “I’ve been clear with my daughters; they are not allowed to marry a Jordanian man while we’re here,” said the father of a family of eight living in Mafraq. A number of men had come to propose. “One was the owner, who is 56, of this building who saw one of the girls and liked her, but we said no,” the father said. “The other was a man who sent one of his female relatives to come and suggest the idea, but we said no again.”

Some are unwilling to recognize the problem of “marriages of convenience.” Pushed to comment on the issue, Kilani said, “Syrians have been marrying Jordanians for many years. Surely there are at most 20 to 25 cases if this is true?” He is right in one sense; hard evidence is extremely difficult to obtain, due to the social taboos, which fuel the entire issue. But anecdotal evidence is growing exponentially. Women who have been inside Beshabshe or one of the other camps have spoken of it. And “cheap brides” jokes are now so commonplace in northern Jordan that they’re almost passé.

Shining a light on this issue requires a careful balance of cultural sensitivity and criticism. The first response to raising the problem is often a gentle shrug and a reference to tradition. This problem may be rooted in long-standing traditions governing marriage, and that factor should not be dismissed. There is no wish here to rush in and point the finger in a way that is at best intolerant, and at worst racist. There is also a concern when writing about this issue that it feeds into every prejudice surrounding how women are treated in the Middle East. That is not the intention. However, that should not be a barrier for a necessary discussion. This is not an issue of “forced marriage,” but rather an examination of the cultural forces that can bind women to oppressive social structures, here and around the world.

Syria’s media war is being waged with gory images from the ground. But preconceived notions about subservient Middle Eastern women could lead the world to assume that there have been no women active on the ground in Syria. This is simply not true: we’re just not looking hard enough.

An image that has become synonymous with the Syrian uprising—any Syrian you speak to knows its intricate details—is of a woman in a blood-red dress (blood being a very important sartorial detail) standing outside the parliament building in Damascus, holding a sign that says: “Stop the killing. We want to build a home for all Syrians.” The woman, Rime Dali, has been detained and released several times by the Syrian government for protesting in this way, but she continues, undeterred, to broadcast her message. This image has become a symbol of the desire by many Syrians to express themselves freely, whatever the cost.

With the uprising rapidly descending into civil war and with the media transmitting images of young men with AK47s rather than placard-waving crowds, the weapons could easily supplant the woman in our collective consciousness. Syria’s media war is being waged with gory images from the ground. But preconceived notions about subservient Middle Eastern women could lead the world to assume that there have been no women active on the ground in Syria. This is simply not true: we’re just not looking hard enough.

FSA Fighters

Rodaina Eeesa Abud sits in a plush apartment in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid. She wears a long, elegant black dress with a black woven chiffon headscarf and gold jewelry. She pulls out her iPhone on which a video shows 20 women, their faces covered in beautiful patterned scarves, wielding AK47s as they stand proudly in their stilettos. These fighters are members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), from the southern town of Dara’a.

“I finished high school and I married early, at 17,” Abud says. “Before the revolution, I was just living a very average life with my husband.” Abud’s reasons for joining the FSA are clear:

“I am a mother,” she says. “When the revolution started in Dara’a, I saw how the Syrian Army treated those children, and I imagined what I would do if those were my children. My maternal feelings drove me to feel like I had to do something about the situation.”

Dara’a is seen as the cradle of the revolution. The torture of 15 young boys who’d drawn anti-regime graffiti had sparked the initial protests.

In the close-knit religious communities of southern Syria, where family bonds are strong, resistance to government suppression of protest was swift. “We saw people from the neighboring village starting to protest, too,” Abud says, “and they would pass by my house. I would stand and talk with them from my balcony about why they were protesting.”

Abud gives the impression that in such a fiercely communal society, doing anything possible to oust the regime—including women arming themselves—has become the new normal. “I saw people who were ready to die to build a new Syria,” she says. “This meant that when the opportunity came for me to get a gun, I took it.”

She goes on: “One Friday I saw a man get shot by the army during a protest. I ran down into the street to help him, as the men could not move freely due to snipers. While a group of us were gathered in a house with him as he died, someone said that we need to do something to protest his death. He said he had a gun, but no way of transporting it, so I volunteered to take it. After that it, became a regular thing, and it made me so happy, as it was a way to help the people of Dara’a.”

Abud says that her initial task of transporting weapons was made far easier because she was a woman; without being checked, she could cross the network of checkpoints and snipers that had sprung up. “There were several women doing this, but I was the best at it,” she boasts, miming how many guns and bullets she was able to stash under her dress while making polite and demure small talk with the soldiers at the checkpoints.

“The women who joined the FSA initially were all those who’d lost a male family member, a husband or a son,” Abud says. “Although at first our job was transportation, later we began to use the weapons, too. The first time I got to fire a gun, I felt like the Arab Spring was coursing through my veins. I was just overjoyed to be doing something, to be part of this.”

She is both matter-of-fact and proud: “One day a group of male fighters went to battle some regime forces in our town,” Abud relates. “When they left, we followed them. The men were pretty surprised to see us there, ready to go into battle with them. Together, we won that battle. The regime soldiers who came as backup for the ones we’d killed were so frightened that they retreated. Although this was a success, the men we were with were annoyed that we’d disobeyed them and followed them, so we started our own group instead.” Her husband has remained to fight within the FSA in Dara’a, while she cares for her injured brother in Jordan, but she is keen to return and fight.

What does Abud want for women in the post-Assad Syria? “We can’t think about what happens post-Bashar al-Assad yet, because the pre-Bashar Al-Assad is too important,” she says. “Women should be out there in the streets saying no to this regime just as much as men. No one should witness their children dying. I fight for everyone, and everyone needs to be involved in this, whether they’re male or female. What I do is for all of Syria.”

The Activists

“I’d join the FSA if they’d have me,” says Alexia Jade, using a pseudonym she chose at the start of the revolution, “but right now they don’t have time to train people to use weapons.” Military service remains compulsory in Syria; army defectors and stolen weapons fuel the FSA, but conscription applies only to men. Yet violent resistance has followed more than a year of peaceful resistance. In this area, Jade says, “We stand shoulder to shoulder with men more than ever before. Women are leaders and spokeswomen just as much as they can be detainees, deportees, or even martyrs.”

Noura, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is an Alawite activist based in Aleppo.

“The concept of male and female disappears with this kind of struggle,” she says. “The courage of certain work is what determines its importance, regardless of who did it. But there’s a certain privilege to being female in this situation, because women need extra courage and ability to overcome the power imbalance.”

Both women are long-time political activists, who have been organizing peaceful demonstrations in Damascus since the beginning of the revolution in March 2011. “This involved choosing a location and designing the route, working out where was dangerous and where was safe, then checking to see if it really is safe,” says Jade. “Now this isn’t such an issue, because we all know the routes and the danger spots, especially as the shelling has increased in some areas.” For Noura, nonviolent resistance took the form of organizing but also of spreading revolutionary media “such as brochures or even graffiti” at first. Now, nonviolent resistance includes medical and relief work. Providing front-line services to the FSA can be as physically and socially dangerous as fighting in certain areas.

Like Abud, Noura and Jade found that being women allowed a greater freedom of movement that they were able to exploit. “It’s part of the social conventions here that women are considered more trustworthy,” Jade says. “Well, that and the stupidity of the security services! With a car I had access to places guys would avoid for fear of detention. Until very recently I used to pass through checkpoints [without being searched], but they’ve begun to check ladies’ IDs now.”

That’s not to say that there are no gender-related complications. “We had rows every so often about feeling that the men were overprotecting us,” Jade says, referring to how initially men would stand on the outside of the group of demonstrators to protect the women from incoming fire. The female activists eventually won this argument by persuading the men of the sad reality that the regime’s forces were indiscriminate about whom they were firing at.

The Netizens

As women have begun to make strides with their public activism, the relative anonymity of the Internet has also provided a platform for women’s resistance. Despite Bashar al-Assad’s iron-fisted grip on communication, the lifeblood of the revolution has been online, often through social media. “You could say that the real revolution started as far back as 2005 due to online activism,” says Khadija. She is Jordanian but has been involved in online activism against the regime since 2003. “Yes I’m Jordanian but I have loyalty to Syria,” Khadija says. “Once I started to be aware of how people suffered under Assad, I had to get involved.”

The Internet provided a veil of protection long before anyone was able to demonstrate publicly against the regime. Khadija says that one of her fellow members “is a blogger about civil rights, focusing on women’s rights and children’s rights. But at the same time she’s a Christian, the daughter of a bishop!” Khadija says that it’s imperative for a group such as this to have members both inside and outside Syria, which is why her role is so important. “You can’t do anything like this where it’s entirely based in Syria, it’s not safe,” she says. “This allows for an approach with a Plan B, with backup. Any large-scale activity like this requires international coordination.”

The core group, named Il Yom al Hurriya or Days of Freedom is composed of 12 members, with a large peripheral group of online supporters. The group was previously an outlet to ease communication, often using coded messages. But in the push toward revolution, Khadija says, “Some of the women who were outside Syria began making videos about how to protest, how to protect your child or yourself from attacks or investigation by the government.”

Online communication began to spill over into physical activism with the start of the uprising, and Days of Freedom began to distribute revolutionary literature and organize peaceful resistance actions, such as putting red dye in the fountains of central squares in Aleppo and Damascus, so that they appeared to run red with blood. This real-world activity puts the group even further at risk in some cases. Khadija’s colleague, after publicly declaring at a protest that she supported the uprising, despite being a Christian, realized that her phone was tapped and her movements watched. The regime forces even targeted her mother’s funeral.

Syria has a long and depressingly sophisticated history of repressing Internet communication, but the revolution has driven more Syrians to express their activism online, creating a “herd” effect, which makes it harder for the regime to crack down on online expression.

Fundraising networks are also trying to reach inside Syria. The Syrian Ministry of Expatriate Affairs estimates that 17 to 18 million Syrians live outside the country, as first- or second-generation émigrés to countries in the Gulf or the United States. Since many left for reasons related to the 42-year rule of the Assad family, an enormous amount of the fundraising and campaigning that sustains global attention on the Syrian cause has been generated from Syrian émigrés. The Internet naturally plays a vital role.

“I’ve been involved in humanitarian relief efforts inside and outside Syria, communication relief for activists still operating inside, not to mention fundraising and purchasing communications equipment for them,” says Reem (not her real name), who lives in the Gulf with her husband. “Overall, I have worked extremely hard to raise awareness about the devastating humanitarian situation going on.” Using the Internet as an interconnected, potentially genderless ‘safe space’ for funding means that an activist in Illinois can raise funds for medical equipment from her local community or from her cousins in the Gulf, and then find a way to distribute them in Damascus. A frequent criticism of long-distance fundraising, particularly from the Gulf States, is that it could end up paying for weapons for the FSA, which is problematic for many. Given the often religious motivations behind such funding, the Internet also provides a method of counterbalance by connecting the large swaths of the secular Syrian Diaspora, who wish to focus their funding exclusively on aid or helping pro-democracy civil-society groups.

The Radical Feminists

“This isn’t just about getting rid of Assad, we want to build a completely new society,” says Zara (not her real name) from the southwestern city of Zabadani. Syrian society is a patchwork of different religions, but overall it is culturally highly conservative. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (based on indicators such as discriminatory family codes, restricted physical integrity, son bias, restricted resources and entitlements, and restricted civil liberties) ranked Syria 75th out of 86 countries worldwide in terms of gender equality.

Zara and her friend, Rasha (not her real name), were both activists who saw the revolution as an opportunity for social as well as political reform. Having begun to attend protests and to connect to networks of activists locally, Rasha, in particular, found that she wanted her involvement to be personal as well as political. “I stopped wearing the hijab, I cut my hair, and I moved out of home,” she says, sipping lemon and mint juice in a café in Amman. At first glance you would think Rasha was a student on exchange in London or Berlin; an eyebrow bar touches the hairline of her bobbed hair, and a pair of Nike Dunks covers her feet.

“The goal is to be freer in all aspects, not just for ourselves but for everyone,” Rasha says. “We can build a new Syria, one that will be an inspiration to the rest of the Middle East,” says Zara, the elegant tattoos on her hand visible as she raises a cigarette to her lips.

Both women had left Syria for a period, but they were planning to return to Zabadani to continue their activism. With a group of women in their town, they were organizing a protest involving a ritual burning of their hijabs in the town square. The personal as political is played out on women’s bodies the world over, but in the context of the Syrian revolution, it carries a deliberately loaded message, in many ways not just against the regime but against those who have sustained it.

Khadija described a memorable protest last year in the small city of Salamiya, near Hama:

“One of the women at the protest went with her brother to a high point above the main body of the protest, and began to cut parts of her clothes off so that it looked like she was wearing a miniskirt,” she says. “It was an act designed to show that the revolution had a secular character, and I can’t emphasize it enough: this is not just a singular incident for one protest. It’s designed to strike at the whole of the society, not just the regime.”

However, such examples are radical and rare. It’s tempting to assume that every woman activist or fighter will also hold radical feminist ideas, ones that sound comforting to Westerners, who are skeptical of Syria’s interplay of religion and culture. Syria may be highly conservative, but in judging Middle Eastern cultures and the way they treat women, Westerners can easily fall prey to their own backward ideas.

Rasha might have thrown away her hijab, but this was an act primarily directed toward the conservative social structures in Syria more than toward religion itself. Those removing their clothes or burning their hijabs are not doing so in the hope that people will become less religious, but instead to sustain the vein of secularism that runs through Syrian society, one they are keen to maintain as part of the uprising.

The majority of women interviewed here were loathe to describe themselves as feminist, even if their actions seem implicitly so. They are feminists by necessity, not by design. “I don’t work as a female activist, I work as an individual regardless of my gender,” says Noura, in itself a radical statement. There has been talk of women helping the FSA fighters by cooking for them and doing their laundry. This might sit uncomfortably with most definitions of feminism, but in itself it is something of a radical act: aiding the FSA can mark someone as a target. These threats are gender-blind, even if what they’re reacting to is not.

The Future

No one knows what will happen in Syria, but change is certain: whatever forces have been brought to the fore are not likely to leave quietly. The increasingly public presence of radical Salafists or other groups fighting the regime in the name of a radically religious agenda could pose a threat to the increasing presence of women in the political sphere. Noura, for example, is concerned about “increasing participation to erase the potentially Islamic and backward character of the uprising,” while others were fighting the regime partly for religious reasons. The Salafists are not a new presence in Syria, which remains a diverse country. If many activists interviewed here get their way, the future Syria could house both groups quite happily.

For the moment, one thing is clear: women and men have suffered equally in the fight for their rights, and that in itself has generated an openness that could have a ripple effect in Syrian society. “Female activism has been seen as normal and integral to this Syrian uprising,” Reem says. “We have far too many females detained and facing horrific treatment at the hands of the Assad regime.”

Standing “shoulder to shoulder” at protests (another oft-repeated phrase) means standing shoulder to shoulder to push for a new future, and the increasing visibility of women in positions of control and power is redefining what women are capable of doing. Women’s rights are undoubtedly seen as one of those after-the-revolution issues: the priority of the activists is removing Assad from power. Demanding things afterwards for themselves or their groups is not necessarily their priority. But in such a conservative society, women have found a new political space, one they are more than capable of filling.

It’s tempting in researching a topic like this to assume that every female activist or fighter also harbors radical feminist ideas. These notions can feel comforting to Westerners, who view the interplay of religion and culture in Syria as suspect. Syria may be highly conservative. But judging it by the way it treats women can lead to Westerners’ fairly backward ideas about Middle Eastern cultures.

Explaining why she’s used a pseudonym when working as an activist since the start of the uprising, Jade laughs and says, “I don’t want my dad to know what I do. He fears for my health already, but he’d freak out if he knew what I’ve been up to. When this is over, I plan to tell him. I hope he’ll be proud.”

Weekly global roundup: Reproductive Health Bill still looms as a promise in the Philippines; the UN hears testimony of rape in Syria; US Christian Right camps out in Africa; Abortion ban in the Dominican Republic impedes a teen's cancer treatment.

Philippines: Catholic Church vs. Reality When it Comes to Contraception

The LA Times has a series, “Beyond the Billion,” which explores population issues worldwide. This week, the long suffering Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines, and the country’s embittered struggle to provide for its citizens’ reproductive health needs is again in the spotlight. The bill, which would provide universal access to sex education and unfettered access to contraception remains in Congress after nearly 15 years under review, and advocates are pushing hard against the stalwart Catholic leadership that largely runs the country. Yet increasingly so, it has become clear just how at odds – and out of touch – the Catholic Church is with the needs and desires of Filipinos. Advocates are hopeful that this dissonance will soon lead to a sea change in policies for the country. In 2010, President Aquino was elected in part because of his outspoken support for the bill, after decades of his outspoken opposition to it – including an executive order banning modern contraception in the capital of Manila. Eighty percent of the population is Catholic, and 70 percent support the Reproductive Health Bill. Lack of access to contraception has contributed to the poverty and ill health of the population, and continues to oppress the human rights of individuals countrywide. Abortion is also entirely restricted in the country, putting women and families in excruciating positions when it comes to determining their fertility, health, and futures. Congress has pledged to vote on the bill within the year. Via The LA Times.

Syria: Crowd-Sourced Rape Findings Presented at the United Nations

Last week, Lauren Wolfe, Director of Women Under Siege – a media and human rights watchdog focused on sexualized violence worldwide – testified at the UN on the use of rape in Syria as a weapon of war. Women Under Siege launched the crowd-sourced map to track instances of sexual violence in the country back in April, utilizing technology to uncover a real-time and evolving picture of the reality of sexual violence. The map is accessible by survivors and witnesses, and tracks where sexual violence is occurring, as well as other details such as how many people were involved and what the outcomes were. Three months later, Wolfe says:

“The major finding of our work is that Syrian government forces have allegedly carried out nearly 70 percent of sexual attacks in the country.”

Wolfe also says the map shows an alarmingly high rate of gang rape. The significance of Wolfe’s testimony and the existence of the map’s data is the probability to stem and address sexual violence as close to the time it occurs as possible. This is a major opportunity for human rights advocates and peacekeepers to challenge what has for too long been the status quo in conflict and crisis settings – that women are subjected to brutal sexual violence with little to no recourse. Let’s hope it doesn’t drift away in vain. Via Women Under Siege.

Africa Continent: US Religious Right Puppeteers Anti-Gay and Anti-Choice Policies

Political Research Associates of Boston, a progressive think tank, has released a report, Colonizing Africa Values: How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa, which details efforts of the Right to infiltrate and “strongly mentor” African religious leaders around specific policy objectives, namely anti-gay and anti-choice. It is no surprise that there’s a strong link between such efforts in the United States and in Africa, as evinced by American Evangelicals’ role in building Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill, or notorious anti-choice Rep. Chris Smith’s African adventures. But the report details a broader and subtler linkage, which may be more difficult to track and ascertain. The report’s key author, Reverend Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican Priest from Zambia, describes U.S. Christian Right “store fronts,” staffed by African employees, largely to appeal to a new demographic. Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Catholic Church’s Human Life International (HLI) and the Mormon-led Family Watch International are all names as having launched or expanded offices in Africa over the past five years.

“By hiring locals as office staff, ACLJ and HLI in particular hide an American-based agenda behind African faces, giving the Christian Right room to attack gender justice and (the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people) as a neocolonial enterprise imposed on Africans and obstructing meaningful critique of the U.S. right’s activities,” the report said. Via AP.

A constitutional ban on abortion in the Dominican Republic has led to a raging debate over the health and life of a 16-year old with acute Leukemia, who also happens to be nine weeks pregnant. The young woman needs chemotherapy to save her life, but which would likely result in the termination of her pregnancy. Doctors are unsure of what to do amid speculation of the implications of the country’s law, which is mostly applied as an all-out ban on abortion. Article 37 of the Dominican Constitution states that “the right to life is inviolable from the moment of conception and until death,” prohibiting abortion in all circumstances, and also outlawing the death penalty. Interpretation of the article has remained sketchy, inhibiting the exercise of reproductive rights countrywide. Hopefully cancer treatment will commence soon, and a richer debate about how to interpret this component of the constitution to protect the rights of women will commence as well. Via CNN International.

Welcome to our new Weekly Global Reproductive Justice Roundup! Each week, reporter Jessica Mack will summarize reproductive and sexual health and justice news from around the world. We will still report in depth on some of these stories, but we want to make sure you get a sense of the rest and the best.

In Myanmar, a Win for Women and for Democracy

Aung San Suu Kyi, an embattled democracy activist who spent more than two decades under house arrest, has won a groundbreaking election for a seat in Parliament. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), says it is on track to win 44 of the 45 seats in Parliament this week, signaling that while much work is left to be done, the wheels of democracy are once again turning in Myanmar. Suu Kyi is a pivotal figure in democracy, human rights, and women’s leadership. The daughter of a democracy activist, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and spent decades being watched, threatened, and oppressed by Burma’s military regime. Her husband, Michael Aris, died of prostate cancer in 1999. The Burmese Government refused to grant him entry before his death to visit Suu Kyi, who was on house arrest at the time. Although they agreed to let her leave to visit him, she felt sure it was a ploy to keep her out of the country and ultimately decided to stay. She said Aris had “sacrificed the companionship of his beloved wife for 10 years so that she could stand with her people in Burma to struggle for human rights and democracy.” Her story is phenomenal and it’s not over yet. Suu Kyi calls the latest elections “a step towards step one in democracy,” but it’s a step nonetheless. If you think Suu Kyi should be on the 2012 Time 100, you can vote for her here. Via Al Jazeera.

UN Opens Inquiry into Honor Killings in India

The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, South African Christof Heyns, completed a two-week trip to India where he investigated the persistence of “honor killings” of women in the country. Heyns visited five regions, including far flung Kashmir, which has harbored tensions for decades, and will submit his findings to the UN Human Rights Council next year. Women in India remain at risk for “honor killings” and abuse at the hands of relatives for a range of reasons, including dowry disagreements, rape retribution, or general dissatisfaction. These crimes are rarely pursued or prosecuted because they are “socially sanctioned,” advocates say. The UN estimates that 5,000 women a year fall victim to these sanctioned killings. The issue is not confined to India; the practice is echoed elsewhere in the world and with the movement of people, has become a burgeoning issue in the US, Canada, and Europe. In January, three members of a Canadian-Afghan family were convicted of first degree murder for the “honor killing” of three daughters and the husband’s first wife. In 2010, the death of an Iraqi American teen in Arizona brought the issue home to the US. As straightforwardly gruesome as they seem, and oftentimes are, “honor killings” are a complex outcome with a diversity of underlying factors often misrepresented or misunderstood. Read six perspectives on the issue from leaders in the Muslim and Hindu communities here. Via TrustLaw.

Tracking Real-Time Rape in Syria

Just two months after launching, the women’s rights watch dog Women Under Siege, unveiled an innovative and interactive effort to combat rape in real-time. As conflict continues to unfold in Syria, the group has launched an open source crowd map enabling victims of rape to identify where and that the event happened. Rape in conflict is rarely covered in full during conflict, but more often profiled after the fact. That sexual violence is both a strategy and outcome of war is not particularly novel, but renewed efforts to elevate this fact in the mainstream, and target this reality as it unfolds, very much is. That’s what Women Under Siege is doing. “We so often have to gather this information after the fact, after so much of it is lost, so anything we can do to get this information out can only help women,” said director Lauren Wolfe. The map serves as both an online and public electronic witness, and lets victims know they are not alone. The effort elevates rape to the urgency of all other civilian causalities in conflict settings, and could serve as a model for tracking other aspects of war as it unravels. Via Mother Jones.

Stakeholders met recently to discuss progress on the Universal Access to Female Condoms (UAFC) Program in Nigeria, a countrywide effort to increase awareness and use of female condoms among women. The project found that female condoms had a 61 percent acceptance rate in 2012, up from a 39 percent acceptance rate when awareness efforts began in 2008. Approximately 10% of women of reproductive age in Nigeria report modern contraceptive use – a dismal rate. Social taboos around contraceptive use, and logistical barriers, like cost, convenience, and supply stock outs, contribute to low usage in Nigeria and across Africa. While female condoms are rarely a favorite, they do offer women a singular option when it comes to woman-controlled barrier method, and HIV prevalence in the country remains high. Female condoms are a great idea in theory, but have been the butt of jokes for many – they are often uncomfortable, loud, or awkward to use. But recent efforts have produced better, sleeker, and sexier versions that could live up to the potential this protection method has. In November, at the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning, the UK’s development program announced five million pounds for female condoms, specifically. Via Vanguard.